The king ultimately had his war and won it, and two years later, fresh off his victory, he was forced to publish another edict: this one a general debt cancellation within his kingdom. As he later boasted, “He instituted freedom (amargi) in Lagash. He restored the child to its mother, and the mother to her child; he canceled all interest due.”13 This was, in fact, the very first such declaration we have on record—and the first time in history that the word “freedom” appears in a political document.
